


The War in our Worlds

by orphan_account



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (consumed by both the characters and the author), (made by both the characters and the author), 80s Music, Aliens, Bad Decisions, Bill is a closet Earth-weeaboo, Conspiracies, Copious Sugar, Dipper is a ufologist and wanna-be filmmaker, Dipper's soul leaves his body approximately five times in the first chapter alone, M/M, Minor warning for naughty words, Misconstrued Pop Culture, Sci-Fi, Slang throughout the ages, UFO Chasers AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 17:36:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6338695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Don't mind the title. Once you realize it's a cross between H. G. Wells and John Green, everything becomes a lot less apocalyptic.)</p><p>Dipper Pines spent his childhood captivated by what lay beyond the stars. For years, he lived solely in the world of conspiracies, posing theories and rambling to anyone he could about aliens, government cover-ups, and natural anomalies.<br/>But it's the summer between high school life and college-dom. Everyone else is moving on, and Dipper is crushed.<br/>Just when it seems as if he'll have to let his childhood dreams fall behind him forever, he runs them over with his truck. But, you know, in a good way</p><p>"The truth is out there, and it's sitting at my kitchen table carefully dissecting a Pop Tart."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The War in our Worlds

When Dipper Pines had been in middle school, he’d devised a points system to calculate the likelihood of his sister’s ideas ending in disaster.  Each factor was assigned a certain number of points, and some things, like alcohol or emotional attachment, were given multipliers of two or three.

In the moment before Dipper ploughed his car into the hitchhiker and subsequently ran his truck off the road, his ranking on the Stupid-O-Meter totalled to 52—and to put things in perspective, Mabel’s plan to stage a fireworks show on the roof of their camp cabin scored a 49, and smuggling snakes out of the zoo by hiding them down her bra was a 57.

Dipper’s points tallied like this:

  * It was night. Dead-ass night. Nothing good ever happened at night, and thus anything past midnight was given an immediate +5 points.
  * He was in the middle of nowhere. Driving along the highway through the desert with nothing but shrubs and telephone poles to keep him company netted him another five points.
  * He was exhausted. The only things keeping his eyes open and foot to the pedal were the fumes from half a dozen energy drinks and raw determination. This merited a three—sleep wasn’t high on Dipper’s priority list.
  * He was pissed as hell (compromising emotions were x4 modifiers). He’d come out to the desert to blow off steam, chasing a lead he knew was a dead end, but the lead was an excuse. He needed to be alone. He needed to pound his fists into the dashboard of the car and to cuss at the sky and to, admittedly, cry a little.



And then he killed a man. That hadn’t been on the agenda for the day.

Ever since he’d gotten his driver’s license last year, he’d used it almost exclusively on trips out into the desert. It’d become a ritual. Wake up late afternoon on weekends, double-check his camera equipment and stocks of Mountain Dew, flip a coin as to whether or not to get Mabel, and then ship off to spend the night watching the sky for UFOs.

Dipper took his ufology very seriously—as evidenced by the grainy photos, red string, and newspaper clippings that covered his walls, his moderator status on truthsightings.com’s forums, and the numerous pieces he’d published in his town’s speculative journal, _The Gravity Falls Conspirer._

And as evidenced by the argument that started this whole mess, Mabel very much did not.

But the human race couldn’t be alone in the universe. He knew there was someone, something, anything out there, and he was going to uncover it. And film it. And make it into a full-length documentary. And become world-renowned for his scientific discoveries and possibly also for his incredible good looks, but that was neither here nor there.

He’d been fiddling with the radio when it had happened. He remembered being twelve and utterly convinced that the continuous bouts of static on the radio meant some extraterrestrial interference, but he’d since learned that Gravity Falls’ atmosphere just really hated music.

Just when Dipper was wondering what the atmosphere had against The Jackson 5, something flashed on the highway.

He only got a split-second look at the hitchhiker before slamming on the breaks. The figure had a bulky backpack slung over one shoulder, and when it turned to stare at the oncoming truck, his glasses reflected the headlights like cat’s eyes, huge and luminous. Then the hitchhiker went flying.

“Fuck!” Dipper’s truck skidded off the road, bumping over rocks and scraggly grass and kicking up plumes of dust. “Fuck!” he repeated, and continued to repeat until he got his steering under control. When the truck finally coasted to a stop, Dipper leaned on the dashboard. After a long silence, he exhaled one last, “Fuck. Oh, fuck me,” and jumped out of the truck.

 “Hey!” he called, bracing himself to find a twitching corpse. “Hey, are you okay? If you can hear me, answer back!”

He fished for a flashlight, and he swept the beam in a radius around his truck, checking first in the spot where he thought he’d seen the body land and circling outwards. He found nothing.

“Sir? Ma’am?” The circle of light flashed like a strobe, his hands were shaking uncontrollably. “Please god, don’t tell me I killed them.”

He spent an hour there, calling out, combing the sand like how he might for pieces of a buried spacecraft, but it was like the hitchhiker had dissolved into the desert dust, or perhaps it was that the figure had never existed in the first place.

It didn’t help that the night had an unreal haze to it, tempting Dipper to write the whole thing off as a dream or a caffeine-and-sugar-induced hallucination. The darkness was thin, and he felt lightheaded.

Then something glinted in his flashlight beam. He figured it must be a soda can or piece of glass or any number of other things that often inspired false hope, but when he bent to pick it up he discovered it to be a seamless metallic cube the size of a throwing die. It didn’t look scuffed either, the sand hadn’t gotten to it yet, so Dipper concluded that it must have been dropped there recently.

Turning the cube over in his fingers sent chills down his spine. Suddenly, he imagined the hitchhiker’s owl-like eyes floating behind him, watching him search, unblinking.

The desire to continue searching left Dipper completely, and he pocketed the cube, noting that it was strangely heavy.

Something in the distance howled, and Dipper scrambled back into the truck.

He spent the drive back into town with his phone balanced on one knee. He couldn’t call the cops. What could he tell them? “Yes, officers? I just made some poor schmuck evaporate into thin air with the front end of my 1990 Ford Lariat. That’s right, I just rammed right into him and he’s gone. Poof. Just like that.” Dipper could practically hear the resulting dial tone. And/or the murder charges.

He couldn’t call Mabel either. She’d— she wouldn’t even pick up.

And as the lights of town drew nearer and the sky blanched from light pollution, two streams of consciousness ran parallel in Dipper’s head. The more distracting of the two were all scenarios wherein he was arrested for manslaughter. The other, the side of his brain that was dedicated to being an obsessive conspiracy nut, was having an absolute field day.

What if the figure had been a spectre? An illusion? But he’d smacked into it, made it shoot through the air like a spiralling football, so it had to have been solid. What if it had teleported away?

Supposedly, stranger things still had happened in Gravity Falls, Arizona. That is, if you believed the stories. And seeing as Dipper did believe them, and seeing as he had no desire to return home at two am, still shaken from committing what was possibly his first murder, he decided to visit the place where all the stories stemmed from: the Desert Flower Bar on the edge of town.

The place had originally been a Mexican restaurant, but had since foreclosed and been taken over by the seedy populace of the town—the mural of knock-off Speedy Gonzales was yet to be painted over. Though not particularly inviting, the Desert Flower opened its doors to everyone, so long as you could stand being in mixed company with truckers, bikers, and ufology nerds alike. Only in Gravity Falls could these species coexist peacefully.

Dipper parked his truck at Speedy’s feet, under the flickering orange streetlight. The parking lot, which was surrounded by chain link and skeleton shrubs, was empty, though that didn’t speak much for the volume of people inside.

Before shuffling his way to the door, Dipper gave his truck a once-over in the new light. He’d inherited it from a friend, a one Soos Ramirez, so the hood already looked like it had been torn apart by a wild cat with a paint fetish, and Dipper was in no state to discern whether those scratches across the grill were from the hitchhiker or that one time his high school had tried to re-enact Mad Max Fury Road.

He gave up and walked inside.

Stepping from the parking lot into the Desert Flower was like passing through some secret veil, or like stumbling onto a movie set. There was this air of drama about the place, as if the bartender was just waiting for the main character to sit down and ask about where the bandits were keeping his dame.

**_INT. DESERT FLOWER BAR – NIGHT_ **

_A handful of surly drunks are passed out over the bar. Others mill about, shooting pool and drinking despite it being early morning. Broken tables and chairs are piled in a disused corner. The walls are covered equal parts in cracked mirrors, 80s rock posters, and vintage photographs of flying saucers. The space reeks of flavoured smoke and moulding wood. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising PLAYS from crackling speakers._

Dipper sighed. At least his script-writing classes came in handy for something.

Visiting the Desert Flower was something of a coming-of-age tradition for the youth of Gravity Falls. At fourteen, you snuck in, had your first drink, and only returned if you were a problem child or a nerd supreme. Dipper was a regular.

He caught a few looks, more nods, as he strolled inside. He contemplated shaking the bartender—a scraggly college dropout named Harley—awake and starting the new day off with a Corona, but a head in the back of the room caught his eye.

He welcomed the distraction.

Candy Chiu was sleeping with her face mashed into the table, her hair, dyed with cobalt streaks, splayed dramatically. She’d passed out in the middle of fiddling with her newest robotics project—what Dipper could only guess was a cross between a Mars rover and a toaster—and wires and circuitry were scattered everywhere. Her Iphone was playing a Korean drama, and her earbuds were still stuck in her ears.

Dipper tapped her shoulder, and she snapped awake, brandishing a tiny screwdriver like a switchblade.

“Wassat?” she mumbled, “Lieutenant General, I swear I wasn’t—“

Dipper held up his hands. “At ease, soldier, it’s only me. Holster your weapon.”

Candy squinted, pushing her bright red glasses back into place on her nose. “Oh, Dip-dork. Blessings be.”

Dipper dragged over a chair and sat down. “Is this really how you spent the first day of your last summer? Tinkering with scrap metal surrounded by a bunch of gross old men?” He gestured at the pool table where a quintet of bikers was shooting, three of which appeared to be conspiring to mug the other two.

“Sounds like your regular Saturdays,” Candy mumbled. “And you’re one to talk, seeing as you spent it feuding with your sister.”

“Shit,” Dipper said, tugging at the strings of his hoodie. “People already know about that?”

Candy shrugged, dropping her earbuds onto the table. “You know it’s a small town.”

“So, what? You’re going to chew me out about it? Tell me to go apologize?”

Candy leaned back in her chair. “I’ve chosen to remain impartial until I can get both sides of the story. And that way I can rent out my services as an objective intermediary if need be. If either of you need a message relayed, it’ll be five bucks. If you want a discount, you have to spill.”

Dipper found himself fiddling with the mysterious cube as he spoke, rolling it between his fingers. “What’s there to say? I guess we’ve just grown out of each other. We both want to stick together, but we’re headed in such opposite directions that it’s just impossible. She’s finally jumped on board with our parents, saying I’m wasting my time with the whole UFO chasing business.”

Candy ground a screw into the plywood table. “Well, we’re all leaving for school in a few months. Maybe it’s about time we admitted that the rumours about our town really were dreamed up just to sell key chains and t-shirts.”

“Not you too,” Dipper groaned. “C’mon, what about that time in seventh grade with the lights above the McDonalds? Or our ninth-grade camp when we lost an entire half hour to a time-skip? Those have to count for something.”

“Dipper...”

“What about Old Man McGucket? Don’t you believe him?”

Candy gave an exasperated sigh. “You know I love him a lot; he’s my second father, he’s my mentor, and he’s brilliant with his machines, but do you ever stop to think maybe he’s called Old Man for a reason?”

“His memories were stolen by aliens!”

“His memories were stolen by Alzheimer’s, Dipper. Look, running around with you and your Mystery Gang was fun, and experimenting with alien technology would have been cool, but we never did find anything.”

Dipper leaned over the table like a businessman about to make a pitch. “I had an encounter tonight, and I ran it over with my truck.”

Candy lifted up her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “It’s too early for this. You did what now?”

Just as Dipper was about to explain, a ruckus broke out on the other side of the bar. He looked over to see Harley facing down a hooded backpacker.

Harley had a habit of sleeping with one eye open, and anyone who spent more than a few seconds looking at him would swear he bore more than a passing resemblance to a lizard.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that,” He was saying. He’d caught the backpacker by the arm, and the stranger was writhing in his grip, though it didn’t look anything worse than firm. “You think you can just stroll in here and snatch whatever drinks you want?”

“Let go of the arm.” The stranger’s hood fell away, and Dipper sat up straight in his chair. The backpacker—the hitchhiker—his hair fell like a knotted veil over his face, making him appear vaguely Bohemian, but his eyes were an unmistakable neon yellow, like they’d been coloured in with a highlighter. He showed no signs of having been run over.

“Put the bottle down,” Harley said, and Dipper noticed the beer clutched in the hitchhiker’s hand.

Dipper stood up and started towards the bar, but a fair sized crowd was already gathering and he found himself needing to push.

“I just got flung ten feet through the air,” the hitchhiker stated. “And that was after walking for seven hours through the wasteland you lot affectionately call a desert. I have no idea where on Earth I am, this mouth is on fire, and you either let me go or I—“

“Or you’ll what?” Harley asked, but the hitchhiker had spotted Dipper through the crowd, and Dipper got the distinct impression that somehow he’d been recognized.

“You’re the one from the desert,” the hitchhiker said, and he let go of the bottle. It smashed to the ground, splattering shoes in froth and green glass. “You’ve got something that belongs to me.”

Dipper’s hand went back to his pocket, his finger closing over the tiny cube, its corners digging into his palm.

Meanwhile, Harley was staring at the mess on the floor. “Yo, what the shit are you doing?” he shouted, and he twisted the hitchhiker’s arm, grabbing onto his wrist as well.

The hitchhiker had started towards Dipper, but when Harley yanked him backwards, he gave a shrill scream. “I said not to touch me!”

“Oh my god,” Harley guffawed. “You absolute spaz. Now, are you going to pay for the drink, or are you going to pay with—“

The hitchhiker reeled back and punched Harley in the nose. Something cracked. Dipper stared, and there was half a second of incredulous silence before the Desert Flower erupted in violence—it was two in the bleary morning and anyone not hankering for a fight was too impaired to realize otherwise.

Candy stood up from her table. “Jesus. Did your friend over there start all that?”

Dipper sized up the situation.

Anyone who had been passed out over drinks was now up and swinging blindly. Those who had been awake in the first place had grabbed stools—as was apparently tradition in bar fights—and were searching madly for a head to smash them over. The bikers who had been at the pool table now duelled equal parts with fists and cues, the world’s most drunk, fat Jedi. Tempers must have been mounting throughout the night.

Harley and the hitchhiker were the eye of the storm. Those around them were either trying to pull them apart, egg them on, or had been knocked unconscious. Homeboy Harley had the out-of-state challenger in a headlock, but the hitchhiker wriggled free and they continue grappling with only the stray punch connecting through the tangle of bodies.

Dipper needed answers. The hitchhiker was alive. He was alive and had recognized Dipper and Dipper needed to know how. Of course, the hitchhiker was also currently getting the piss beat out of him by Harley, but Dipper waded into the fight anyways, determined to break them apart.

Fights weren’t exactly a rarity at the Desert Flower, and Dipper wove through the crowd like it was an obstacle course and he a marine-in-training.

He reached the center and nearly had his face mashed in by the hitchhiker’s elbow. The hitchhiker was also screaming hysterically.

With a hand to each of the fighter’s shoulders, Dipper tried to pry them apart. “Okay, that’s enough. Harley, rein it in.”

“Stay out of this, Pine Nut!”

Every ufologist that frequented the Desert Flower got a nickname from Harley. Unfortunately, Dipper’s was also a pun.

The hitchhiker, whose hair was bunched in Harley’s fist, actually laughed. “Pine Nut? You guys have really weird names now. Here I thought you called yourselves Stuart or Gandalf or whatever, not that Pine Nut is any less stupid.” Then he looked to Dipper. “And I’d love my Ace-Bit back now, if you will.”

“Your what?” Dipper held up the metal cube. “This?”

The hitchhiker’s eyes lit up, still that strange Sharpie-yellow. “By George, that’s it. Here, it’s danger—“

While the hitchhiker was distracted, Harley caught him off guard with an uppercut that missed the chin and instead collided with the hitchhiker’s jaw.

The hitchhiker let rip a sound akin to a capuchin monkey getting its tail stuck in a blender.

“Harley!” Dipper protested as he tried again to untangle them.

“The bit!” The hitchhiker screeched, even as Harley held him by the collar.

The cube slipped from Dipper’s hand, tumbling to the floor with a flurry of crushed chips and cashews.

The hitchhiker gave Harley an almighty shove.

Dipper heard ripping as the hitchhiker’s jacket tore, then he felt the hitchhiker grab onto his arm, fingernails digging past Dipper’s hoodie.

Dipper went to say, “Get off of me, you creep!” but just then the cube hit the floor, there was a pop and a flash of blue light, and Dipper felt the air sucked from his lungs.

He coughed madly. “What— what the fuck?”

His skin tingled with pins and needles. His vision was clotted with white, and as he blinked he heard the hitchhiker muttering. “No. No, no, no! Oh, Christ Jimmeny no!”

When Dipper could finally see again, it took his brain a couple clicks to process what had happened.

The world was frozen. Brawlers stood like statues, their mouths open in roars suddenly silenced, spittle hanging midair. Bottles were halfway through bursting into explosions of glass. Candy, at the back of the room, was caught dodging a pool cue that had ricocheted her way like a javelin.

The only thing moving was the hitchhiker, and he whirled around to face Dipper. Dipper took a step back, and the hitchhiker barked, “Don’t move!”

Dipper froze to match the rest of the world. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t freak out!” The hitchhiker said. “And don’t move. As mesmerizing as it is to see someone’s hand get liquefied into a smoothie at the speed of a snail, it’s not something I would recommend experiencing first... hand. As it were.”

“Wait,” Dipper said, trying to scrape his jaw off the floor. He stared at the cloud of pretzels scattered in suspended animation a foot from his face. “Wait, did you just freeze time?”

“First correction: time isn’t frozen; we’re hyper-accelerated. Second correction: you’re the one who dropped the Ace-Bit, and you’re also the one who attacked me with your vehicle. So excuse you.”

“That _was_ you!” Dipper cried, trying to muffle his triumph. “How did you—? No, more importantly, what are you? How the fuck are you alive?”

The hitchhiker sucked in a breath. “Hoo boy. I did not expect to have to break out The Speech this soon, but I’ve been practicing so—“

“You’re from off-world, aren’t you?” Dipper interrupted, a smile a mile wide creeping onto his face. “Oh my god, with technology like this you must be. You’re an alien. You’re an alien, right?”

The hitchhiker looked taken aback. “Well, you tell me, pal. You seem to have it figured out alright.”

“No,” Dipper gasped, and he gave the hitchhiker a once-over. “You can’t be. You’re kidding me. You’re not kidding me?” He did a tiny happy dance of excitement. “Holy shit, you’re not kidding me.”

The hitchhiker—the alien—blinked his egg-yolk eyes. “Are— are you okay?”

“Fine!” Dipper squeaked. He giggled, edging towards a hysteric breakdown. “It’s just— Oh my god.”

 “I know I just threw a meta-physical wrench in the concept you humans like to call time,” the hitchhiker said. “But get a grip.”

“Sorry,” Dipper said, still grinning extensively. He was a fangirl at a One Direction concert and he couldn’t have cared less. “It’s just that I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone like you, and then I run into you with my truck?” He jerked to a stop, like a dog collared to a chain of sudden, horrific realization. “Oh god, I ran you over with my truck.”

“It’s no big deal,” the hitchhiker said, shrugging. “I can just take your kidneys and we’ll call it even.”

“Come again?”

The hitchhiker laughed, breathy, nasally guffaws. “It’s a joke, Pine Nut. Your sense of humour wasn’t purely a fictional construct I hope. Are all humans like you?”

Dipper laughed nervously. In all his years of daydreaming, of inventing scenarios and planning around them, he’d never imagined his encounter with the beings beyond to be so casual—if anything happening in a time bubble could be considered casual. All the same, his heart was racing a mile a minute. Not only were there butterflies in his stomach, but they’d also drank just as many energy drinks as he had, and he felt in danger of passing out. Or throwing up. Or possibly both. But not in front of the extraterrestrial, because Jesus Christ that’d be embarrassing.

The millions of questions he’d compiled over the years lodged in his throat, and instead of asking he ended up answering. “Not all humans are like this, like me. I mean, humans are pretty diverse, and they’re all over the world. I’m just a disaster. That is, I’m not important here!” He practically gasped the last part.

“I’d say you’re important,” the hitchhiker said point-blank. “Fascinating anyways.”

Dipper went red like a cherry lollipop. Yup, he was gonna pass out.

“I need to get my camera,” he stuttered. He needed to document this shit. “Could you unfreeze time so I can get my camera?”

The hitchhiker chuckled. “Seriously, all humans aren’t like you, are they? Because _District 9_ gave me the distinct, opposite impression.”

Dipper frowned. “Wait, _District 9_? The movie? How—?”

Just then, the Ace-Bit flashed, beeping a warning from the floor. All around Dipper, airborne object resumed their journeys, moving as if through gelatine as time slowly rebooted. The feuding people creaked to life, statues inching awake.

“Cheese and crackers,” the hitchhiker muttered. “Right, here’s the deal, Pine Nut. You caught me at a bad time, and I need your help.”

“I’ll help you,” Dipper said instantly.

The hitchhiker smiled. “A bit forward, are we? Here’s the situation: I’ve only just arrived on planet, I’ve been stuck wandering the desert for hours, and I need a place to stay while I get my bearings. If you help me with that, and if you can help me get out of this—“ He gestured around them, to the mass of bodies, to the smashed furniture, and to Harley, whose mouth was slowly forming what would no doubt be a very naughty word. “—this mess that I’ve apparently incited, I’ll answer all of your questions. That and you attempted to murder my body so you owe me something. You can feel guilt, right? I can guilt you in this.”

Dipper nodded. The guilt was entirely unnecessary. He was going to help the strange alien if it was the last thing he did.

The hitchhiker knelt to pick up the Ace-Bit. “As soon as this thing comes off the ground, everything is going to go to hell. Are you ready?”

Had Dipper been thinking, he would have realized his entire situation far exceeded the limits of the Stupid-O-Meter and that he should put a stop to it immediately, but then again, he’d stopped thinking about five minutes ago.

“Ready.”

The hitchhiker lifted the Ace-Bit from the floor and everything went to hell.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you understand (both from the chapter title, the tags, and the text itself) that I am taking this whole thing 0% seriously. This is going to be my bat-shit crazy "all happy fun times until someone explodes" kind of fic, and if you don't like it you can go back to reading your sappy pirate drabbles or deer-fucking stories or whatever.
> 
> (Not that there's anything wrong with either of those things. My beta (ShadowAcurus, lovely guy, kisses) has told me that the deer-fucking is actually quite eloquent and well researched, and I think Billdip Pirates speaks for itself as a practical genre at this point.)
> 
> Anyways! While this first chapter leaves just about a million questions up in the air, I'm afraid they won't be answered for a while yet. I have prior engagements with another story and won't be updating here until THAT THINg is done and buried. 
> 
> So in the meantime feel free to tell me just how little sense all this made and harass me over why I never update consistently. If you're gonna take the time out of your day to bug the shit out of someone, may as well let it be me for a change. 
> 
> Ciao.


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